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The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

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Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 10 years is too generous. I'd rather make it 0 instead. I said 10 years because it's what would make copyright tolerable . The right thing as far as I'm concerned is abolishing it straight up. 10 years is a reasonable compromise. Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it. The raw reality these monopolists face is that public domain is the default state of all information. We're all just pretending th…

You’re clearly someone who just wants to consume content without rewarding the authors for it. There’s no point arguing against a position that’s fundamentally flawed.

Do you wanna know how many thousands of dollars my Steam account is worth? My PSN account? My physical video games and media collection? How much money I've spent on streaming services? For your information, I'm one of the idiots who was dumb enough to buy Windows Vista Ultimate. I have the shiny box and discs to prove it.

Not a single person on this website can accuse me of not supporting creators. I do it willingly, even though I don't believe in copyright, because I don't believe in punishing creators for flaws of the system. I do it even though I know deep down I'm getting an inferior product: "pirates" get blu-ray remuxes free while I get shitty ass Netflix video with compression artifacts in 90% black frames.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 10 years is too generous. I'd rather make it 0 instead. I said 10 years because it's what would make copyright tolerable . The right thing as far as I'm concerned is abolishing it straight up. 10 years is a reasonable compromise. Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it. The raw reality these monopolists face is that public domain is the default state of all information. We're all just pretending th…

> Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it. Yes?

Yes, and we can make it stop existing if we want to. Even without a billion dollar lobbying campaign. It's called civil disobedience. Convince yourself some law is fundamentally flawed and shouldn't exist, make the choice to disobey and accept the consequences.

> Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#114

The best way I have found to prevent the piracy of my book ( https://kerkour.com/black-hat-rust ) is to inundate pirate platforms with only the first chapter and with a discount code inside for those who can't afford the original price. My hypothesis is that if they enjoyed the first chapter, most people would want to support my work instead of being freeriders. So far it worked really well. Thinking that you can pre…

Please stop spamming these websites with fake content.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#115

To be honest I’ve never understood why people believe they’re entitled other people’s work for free. Perhaps someone can clarify?

That sounds like a charged question from someone that's not actually interested in learning more, but in case you are actually interested, or if anybody else is curious: the above line of thought is based on a faulty conflation of physical items vs information, similar to how "intellectual property rights" try to glom onto physical property rights to give it a sheen of legitimacy.

They're fundamentally different things, and technology has made that difference obvious. Instead of adapting, some people prefer to try using legal means to turn back the clock and pretend that this whole computer thing didn't really happen. That approach hasn't worked out well, and will become even less effective as technology progresses.

The solution is not to look backwards like luddites, it's to embrace the new options that technology gives. There's several great ways to earn a living while producing information that people use today:

- Get paid before producing the information, like Kickstarter

- Get paid in an ongoing manner to produce information, like Patreon

- Produce the information in order to attract interest in other ways to make money, such as a band going on tour or doing limited print runs of vinyl records

- Get paid directly for the information, like Bandcamp

- Less ethical options, such as ad-supported

So to directly answer the "entitled to other people's work for free" fallacy, remember that the "other people" in this scenario are the ones sharing their work. If you don't want the world to sing your song, keep it to yourself. If you do want to share it, there's plenty of ways to make a living while doing so.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not a reasonable compromise. Your proposal of 0 years in a nonstarter, and walking slightly back from that is still a nonstarter. On the contrary. Copyright itself is a non-starter. Remember, public domain is the natural state of information. They're the ones who need to convince us to respect whatever social contract they seek to impose. They are doing such a horrible job at it that it can be argued that co…

> Remember, public domain is the natural state of information. Nah, decaying is the natural state of information. It requires non-trivial effort to keep information available for reading and interpreting. Even paper, one of the best mediums for storing data over time, decomposes if not actively protected.

Humanity would be more than happy to make that effort if there was no risk of getting sued to oblivion for it. There's more than enough distributed storage capacity out there to hold it all. Copyright holders are the ones who are outright hostile to any and all preservation efforts, to the point preservation of culture is an argument for getting rid of copyright.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#117

To be honest I’ve never understood why people believe they’re entitled other people’s work for free. Perhaps someone can clarify?

It’s the nature of how computers make copying an initial work nearly zero additional cost. This has never been the case in human history prior to digital/analog recording of content, and it keeps getting closer and closer to zero cost to duplicate. This breaks people’s moral framework because they now have to grasp things like game theory to understand second and third order harm.

This comments relies on a faulty assumption that other people share the same moral framework as the commenter. Unfortunately, people commenting like this don't tend to realize how much of their own moral framework is simply an ill-fitting hand-me-down from previous generations.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#118
post #20

Before Poland joined the EU, one of leftovers from communism was that IP laws resembled these in China - in reality there were none in effect. Imagine farmers' market but with bootleg VHS and audio cassettes, CDs, brand clothes etc. In every major city. On a weekly basis. Great majority of Poles were poor as shit and buying original copy of music or video cassette was a very distant thought. Piracy was "normal". I wa…

> Great majority of Poles were poor as shit and buying original copy of music or video cassette was a very distant thought.

Were originals even available for sale?

One of Gabe Newell's best insight was that piracy was often caused by content simply not being available for purchase at all.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#119

To be honest I’ve never understood why people believe they’re entitled other people’s work for free. Perhaps someone can clarify?

The better question is why you think you're entitled to an inheritable multiple lifetime government assigned monopoly on literally any intellectual production of your mind. Even the proponents of patents aren't that entitled.

Intellectual property can be logically reduced to number ownership. Art, films, music, source code... It's just data. Data is just bits. Bits are numbers in base 2. You're trying to own numbers in the 21st century, the age of information and permanently networked pocket supercomputers. That's how delusional ownership of ideas really is.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#120

The best way to reduce piracy of copyrighted works is to cut the copyright period by 75% relative to current standards. To be fair to individual living authors who hold their own copyrights, this would mean copyrights persisted 18 years past the author's death, or for 24 years after date of publication for for-hire contract jobs. This is comparable to the lifetime of technical patents, and so would allow for a reason…

> The best way to reduce piracy of copyrighted works is to cut the copyright period by 75% relative to current standards.

Personally, I believe this would have a negligible effect on piracy or even online arguments around copyright. I believe that, because I think the most piracy concerns recent works, e.g., computer games and movies of the last few years.

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